Burying Malthus to save Malthusianism
The so-called ‘progressive greens’ challenging the idea that the planet is overpopulated are actually only interested in making Malthusian thinking more palatable and PC.
by Brendan O’Neill
In recent years, a few environmentalist thinkers have started to criticise the narrow Malthusianism of their fellow contemporary greens. Peoplequake by Fred Pearce is the latest attack by a greenie on the Reverend Thomas Malthus, the original population scaremonger, and his slavish followers in today’s population-control lobby. With its quips about the weird, harelipped reverend’s hatred of poor people, its critique of the deeply misanthropic eugenics movement, and its challenge to the idea that Africa is overpopulated, Pearce’s book might even look to some like a refreshing defence of rational thinking against the hysteria of the human-hating, womb-fearing lobby. It is no such thing. Pearce, like other influential green thinkers, is burying Malthus only to save Malthusianism.
Peoplequake is the literary equivalent of reaching into the steaming pile of historic bullshit that is Malthusian thought in a bid to salvage some pellets of prejudice that might be applied to today’s world. Pearce, like the Guardian’s George Monbiot, Andrew Simms of the New Economics Forum and other leading proponents of climate-change alarmism, is simply made deeply uncomfortable by the fact that so many contemporary greens have been inspired by Malthus, a man who, not to put too fine a point on it, was the scum of the Earth, who thought poor people should be deprived charity and healthcare and if they died as a result, well good, since they have ‘no claim of right to the smallest portion of food’. Disconcerted about being associated with such foul elitism, and conscious of the fact that the scaremongering claims of every single Malthusian since Malthus himself have been contradicted by humanity’s leaps forward, Pearce and others are keen to create a new kind of outlook: what we might call post-Malthus Malthusianism.
Tags: Malthusians
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March 31st, 2010 at 7:56 pm
O’Neil’s critique of Pearce’s book sort of reminds me of my own feelings towards Edwin Black’s book “War Against the Weak.” Though it’s one of the best researched attacks on the entire post War eugenics movement, it, in many ways, serves as damage control for today’s crypto-eugenic projects, such as abortion. There’s even a whole chapter meant to clear the good name of Margaret Sanger that, unintentionally, succeeds in damning her with faint praise. When the book is considered in this light it becomes clear why the Rockefeller Foundation granted Black access to their private archives. The Elite and those they have conned cannot allow Planned Parenthood to sink into disrepute. Guess Peoplequake is a similar Malthusian sacrifice play.
April 2nd, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Oops, in the above post, I meant to write “pre-war eugenics movement” not “post War.” Sorry.
April 3rd, 2010 at 2:03 pm
I have to admit I haven’t read any of Black’s works. I should though.
On the book you cited, there isn’t a preview at either Amazon or Google books. When you say the “private archives” of the Rockefellers, what exactly do you mean? I’m thinking along the lines of Ferguson in his House of Rothschild books, where he was allowed to consult archives held by the family that had previously been unavailable to other scholars. Was it a similar situation with Black and the Rockefellers?
April 4th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Unfortunately I don’t own a copy of “War Against the Weak,” (I borrowed it from the library) so I can’t cite verbatim but if I remember correctly, Black thanks (possibly in the forward) the Rockefeller Foundation, for allowing him access to their private archives. Since it’s a book revealing and condemning the Foundation’s past actions, their openness to Black betrayed to me a kind of damage control. The current heads of the foundation obviously want us to think, “If their willing to help him write this book, their organization has clearly abandoned this sinister philosophy.” At the end of the book Black shows how modern genetics organization share a direct continuity with pre-war eugenics, however, I can’t remember if he implicates the Rockefeller Foundation as one of the primary forces behind all this. Even if he does slam designer babies and the like, it’s irrelevant to today’s elite anyway. It’s likely they understand that this is something so (seemingly) farfetched, that most people naively believe it to be sci-fiction, thus allowing the elite to gradually sneak it in society’s backdoor. As I mentioned above, the book really serves the elite by attempting to separate the Rockefeller funded Planned Parenthood from eugenics, when of course, as you and I and so many others know, it is perhaps the primary discriminators of.
I think one of the reasons Black’s book was so heavily promoted (in contrast to many of the previous books exposing eugenics) is because the elite understood the cat to already be out of the bag where their past eugenic sins were concerned, as such they wanted to bring a sort of controlled criticism to the forefront of the popular attack on their collective character. Thus they ensured that Black’s book, which refuses to draw the line between eugenics and abortion, be lifted above all others. One might argue that Black’s book received greater press than other works on the subject, simply because it was so well researched but remember that one of the reasons for this is because elite groups like the Rockefeller Foundation allowed him access to their archives. Though Black himself means well and his book is an excellent store house of information on the criminal history of eugenics, “War Against the Weak” is, at least to some extent, controlled opposition.